Claims of religious rights idle busy death chamber
HOUSTON — Executions in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state face delays amid legal questions over Texas’ refusal to allow spiritual advisers to touch inmates and pray aloud as condemned individuals are being put to death.
It’s unclear when Texas may carry out another execution after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear religious freedom claims from death row inmate John Henry Ramirez. The court blocked his execution last month, about three hours after it could have been carried out. Several other inmates have since made similar claims, and courts have put some of their executions on hold.
“It would be unusual for somebody who has the same issue to not get a stay while the Supreme Court is deciding that issue,” said Michael Benza, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
A ruling from the Supreme Court could be months away. It will hear oral arguments on Nov. 1.
Ramirez says the state is violating his religious freedom by not letting his spiritual adviser lay hands on him and pray out loud as he is executed. Texas prison officials say that direct contact poses a security risk and that prayers said aloud could be disruptive.
The most recent delay was for Stephen Barbee. He was set to be executed last Tuesday, but U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt in Houston ruled Thursday that Barbee has initially shown Texas’ “limitations in the execution chamber substantially burden the exercise of his religion.”
Courts already had granted delays for two other inmates — Ruben Gutierrez, scheduled for Oct. 27, and Fabian Hernandez, set for Nov. 3 — at the request of prosecutors. Kosoul Chanthakoummane, set to die Nov. 10, and Ramiro Gonzales, scheduled for execution on Nov. 17, also are raising similar religious freedom claims.
Executions in Texas have been sporadic in the last two years, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with just three lethal injections carried out last year and three so far this year. Texas carried out 13 executions in 2018 and nine in 2019.
The Supreme Court has dealt with the presence of spiritual advisers in the death chamber in recent years but has not made a definitive ruling. The inmates are citing the Constitution’s First Amendment as well as a 2000 federal law that protects a prisoner’s religious rights.
The high court’s review comes after the Texas prison system in April reversed a two-year ban on spiritual advisers in the death chamber but limited what they can do. Texas instituted the ban after the Supreme Court in 2019 halted the execution of Patrick Murphy, who had argued his religious freedom was being violated because his Buddhist spiritual adviser wasn’t allowed to accompany him. Murphy remains on death row.
Michael Mushlin, a law professor at Pace University in New York, said it’s likely the Supreme Court will issue a ruling on two issues: whether spiritual advisers can pray out loud and whether they can touch an inmate. But it’s unclear if the court will issue a broader ruling that lays out everything a spiritual adviser can do in an execution chamber, he said.